Steeping in History, Committed to the Future

While our program is one of the oldest in the nation, we are continually looking forward to cutting-edge research and advancements within this exciting field so that our graduates excel in the quickly growing PA job sector.

Physician Assistant Department

The Physician Assistant Department’s PA program, one of the nation’s oldest and largest, is pledged to providing students with the most current and finest preparatory training available. Employing continuous curricular analysis, assessment of the best clinical practices, and utilization of state-of-the art in educational technologies, program graduates are eminently prepared to undertake their roles as professional health care practitioners.
The Physician Assistant profession is one of the fastest growing and highly regarded professions in the country. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has consistently ranked the profession among the 30 fastest growing occupations. We are committed to providing the education and training needed to enter this exciting job sector.
We offer a Physician Assistant Master’s (PA) Program and a PA Post-Professional Master’s Program. Please explore our web pages for a wealth of information about our programs, students, faculty, research and clinical practice.

Physician Assistant Faculty

News & Events

11/05/14

Jones & Bartlett Learning has published Nina Multak’s book Clinical Procedures for Health Professionals. The book covers the common basic and advanced clinical procedures that health professionals encounter, discussing each procedure “in terms of rationales, evidence-based indications, contraindications, potential complications, special considerations, and step-by-step procedural instructions.” Those who purchase the book have access to a companion website that features 34 videos illustrating the procedures.Multak, PA ’88, is an assistant clinical professor in the Physician Assistant Program at the College of Nursing and Health Professions.

Joke Bradt, PhD, an associate professor in the Creative Arts Therapies Department, and a team of Drexel students have been published in Supportive Care in Cancer. Bradt and Creative Arts Therapies PhD candidates Minjung Shim, Donna Radl, and Noah Potvin, MA in Creative Arts Therapies student Amy Kesslick, and Emily Schriver, MS Epidemiology and Biostatistics co-authored “The impact of music therapy versus music medicine on psychological outcomes and pain in cancer patients: a mixed methods study.”

“Our PhD students were involved in this study as research assistants, with Minjung Shim as the study coordinator, Donna Radl as the outcome assessor, and Noah Potvin as the primary coder of the qualitative data,” explained Bradt. “Amy Kesslick, a music therapist at Hahnemann Hospital, was the clinician in the study.” The study was completed in collaboration with Komarnicky-Kocher, MD, Director of the Drexel College of Medicine Cancer Center. Funding for the study was provided by the Cancer Center.

Julie Kinzel, MCPHU ’00, an assistant clinical professor in the Physician Assistant Department, recently published an article, “A Review of the Atypical Presentation of Celiac Disease in Pediatric Populations,” in Advance for NPs and PAs.

11/05/14

Congratulations to our senior students in the Physician Assistant Program who presented professional posters at the Pennsylvania Society of Physician Assistants.

11/05/14

Students, faculty, and staff from the Drexel Physician Assistant Department celebrated National Physician Assistant Week with community service, education, and awareness efforts during the week of October 6-12, starting with sponsoring a National PA Week message on top of the PECO Building. Drexel’s Physician Assistant Department also held local blood pressure screenings, delivered casseroles to St. John’s Hospice and Homeless Shelter, and educated patients at the hospice about diabetes.

The PA profession was created in 1965 at Duke Medical Center by Eugene Stead, MD. The first physician assistants graduated from Duke University on October 6, 1967. There are now more than 100,000 clinically practicing PAs, and National Physician Assistant Week was created by the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) to celebrate and recognize the importance and skills of being a PA.

The Physician Assistant Program at the Drexel College of Nursing and Health Professions is one of the oldest and largest PA programs in the country. Established in 1971 at the Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital, the program has a long history of innovation in primary care education for physician assistants and a mission to improve healthcare in rural and urban underserved communities. The Program has graduated thousands of physician assistants over the years, many of whom practice in primary care settings as well as in medical and surgical disciplines and sub-disciplines. About a quarter of the Drexel Physician Assistant Program’s graduates practice in underserved communities across the United States and abroad.

Student Voices

Victoria Scotti, a PhD candidate in the Creative Arts Therapies program, was just awarded the Estonian Student Scholarship for the second year in a row. Along with classmate Angela Aicher, Scott is co-authoring an article on arts-based research...